


Love

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [10]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autism, Autistic Zuko, Child Abuse, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Grief, Implied Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Iroh isn’t perfect, Iroh saves the day, Iroh’s love language is words of affirmation, Lots of Crying, Minor Character Death, Ozai’s A+ Parenting, So many emotions, Therapy, Zuko’s Scar, Zuko’s is not but by golly he’s going to try, amazing librarians, graphic depiction of Zuko getting his scar, is that a word?, minor character is Lu Ten, neuronormativity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: Iroh loses his son and learns how to kidnap other people’s children instead.That sounds worse than it is.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 50
Kudos: 392





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know I keep telling you this is going to make you cry, but I almost made _myself_ tear up with this one and I have low empathy.  
> This is the longest installment by 2K words, and roughly three and a half times as long as Disrespect. I kept waiting for it to be finished and it just kept going.

Iroh was lost after Lu Ten died.

He walked through life in a haze, mechanically eating and sleeping and getting through the day, and some days he honestly wondered what the point was.

His son was dead. That isn’t something you _get over._

His son was dead, and he was alone.

Once a young officer missing a leg came by to deliver the last of Lu Ten’s possessions—didn’t want to risk them getting lost in the shuffle, he said—and tell Iroh very earnestly that he wouldn’t be alive without Lu Ten and that his son was a brave man who’d died a hero.

Iroh thanked him, but it didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

Nothing changed anything.

Iroh’s therapist thinks it would be good for him to be with his remaining family, and he doesn’t have the energy to fight, so he moves to a house near his younger brother’s. Not in the same neighborhood—Ozai lives in a mansion, which is only to be expected for a CEO of a company that large, and Iroh only needs a small place. But close enough to visit regularly.

“It’s good that you’re here,” his sister-in-law tells him once. “It’s good for the children to have… _more_ role models.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he answers, and doesn’t say anything about what kind of role model a sad, broken, lonely old man could be. Zuko and Azula are children, bright and vivacious, and he has nothing to offer them.

The point is driven home when he gives Zuko a set of green army men for his birthday, and Azula a stuffed cat for hers a few months afterward, and catches Zuko with the cat some time later.

“Nephew, did you take your sister’s toy away?” he scolds gently. “That isn’t very nice.”

Zuko shakes his head. “We switched,” he explains. “I don’t like army men much, and Az doesn’t really collect stuffed animals.”

Zuko does not mean for it to hurt, he tells himself. He is not a malicious child.

“But you do like stuffed animals?”

“I like how soft it is.” He pets the cat in demonstration. “And Az likes acting out battle strategies, so it works out. Except Father thinks I’m too old for soft things, so I have to hide it when he’s home.”

Iroh clearly doesn’t really know his niece and nephew at all, and the knowledge feels like a failure on top of failures. Sneaking in at the back of his awareness is the thought that his brother is not a kind parent.

When Zuko is nine, Ursa comes home from some appointment and tells him that Zuko has been diagnosed with autism. Her face is drawn and worried, and Iroh offers her a hug.

“I kept thinking he would grow out of it,” she tells him tearfully. “That he would learn how not to annoy his father. Lord, that sounds terrible. Zuko’s so blunt, and he has meltdowns sometimes, and every time I’m afraid of what his father’s going to do, and he’s just not wired in a way that will keep him _safe._ ”

“I’m sure it will be fine. Ozai would not harm his own son.”

Ursa stiffens, dabs at her eyes, and turns away. “I’m sure it will,” she says, and Iroh can’t shake the feeling that it was the wrong answer.

She leaves nine months later. One day, she’s there, and the next, she isn’t, and Zuko is distraught. Azula and Ozai are impassive.

It takes Iroh a week or so to realize that Zuko isn’t _worried,_ he’s _sad._

“She’s not coming back,” he tells Iroh when he asks. “She said she had to keep me safe, and so I had to stay here.”

It seems very odd to Iroh that Ursa, who was so worried about Zuko being safe around his father, has now left him with his father for the same reason.

Iroh tries to be more active in his niece and nephew’s lives, now that they don’t have their mother, but he isn’t sure how well he succeeds. He visits as often as he did before, and he tries to ask them about their lives and their interests. He finds out that Zuko doesn’t like movie theaters, but he has a collection of recorded plays that he loves, and he watches his favorite almost every week. He finds out that Azula likes puzzles and strategy games, but if she plays them with Zuko, the stakes are apparently high as mountains, while if she plays them with Iroh or her father or herself, she’s much more relaxed and likely to appear to be having _fun_. This goes on for a year or two, and then they begin to push him away, and he assumes they’re just growing up and don’t want to indulge their doddering old uncle anymore.

He doesn’t think again of Ursa’s fears until Zuko is thirteen and _something_ happens that no one will explain to his satisfaction.

His nephew is taken to the hospital with second-degree burns over his left eye. Ozai seems distraught, and he and Zuko both explain to anyone who asks that Zuko had simply tripped and fallen, but there are holes in the story Iroh doesn’t think he’s imagining.

He catches the glances shared between hospital staff that tell him they noticed it too.

Why, to begin with, was the stove burner on without the grate upon which one rests a pot or pan?

Why also were the burns so bad, so deep, not as though flames had brushed across his face for a second but as though he had been held down—

Iroh quietly upgrades his suspicion of his brother from ‘not kind to his children’ to ‘possibly physically abusive in a particularly heinous manner,’ but he already knows he has no proof and Ozai has too much power. As long as Zuko is too scared to say anything, he has no case, and even if that changes, he has little hope that they could win in court.

After all, when one is the richest man in the world, there are precious few judges and juries that can’t be bribed.

For that matter, if one’s husband is the richest man in the world, one cannot possibly take the children and disappear and expect to get away with it, and Iroh tries not to drown in guilt for not listening better to Ursa.

Iroh visits Zuko in the hospital, but Zuko doesn’t want him there and honestly it hurts to listen to him scream as the staff (doctors? Nurses? Iroh wasn’t paying enough attention to know) debride the burn, then whimper through the fever when infection sets in. So Iroh perhaps doesn’t come as often as he should.

The infection travels to Zuko’s vocal cords. Iroh isn’t entirely clear on how that was possible, and he’s never sure afterwards how much of the damage was the infection and how much the screaming, but Zuko’s voice never recovers. Neither does his eye, although the infection is stopped before it reached his optic nerve and took the other eye with it.

Iroh tries to invite both the children to visit him more often after Zuko got out of the hospital, but Zuko has grown into a prickly teenager, and Azula takes pleasure in being bitingly cruel, and they yell about not needing pity and snipe about Iroh being senile, respectively.

No more mysterious accidents befall the children, at least not where Iroh can see, and he hopes it was an isolated incident. Both the children still seem to adore their father; is it possible Iroh was wrong?

Zuko is fifteen when Iroh surprises him in his bedroom holding a lighter to the flesh of his inner arm, and Iroh’s heart breaks.

Zuko snaps the lighter shut, but he’s too late, and he clearly knows it, skin paling and eyes growing wide and panicked. (One eye opens more than the other and adds salt to the wound.)

“Get OUT!” Zuko yells, flinging the lighter to the carpet and standing.

“Zuko. Please.” Iroh puts his hands up, pleading, but Zuko isn’t having it.

“OUT! NOW!”

“All right. All right.” Iroh leaves him alone and takes himself to the restroom instead, not willing to trust that his expression would pass muster with Ozai. He splashes some water on his face and stares at his reflection in the mirror.

He looks old, and tired, and not at all prepared for this.

Zuko catches him on his way out of the bathroom, snatching his arm and then letting go immediately. “Don’t tell Father,” he begs. “ _Please._ ”

“I will not,” Iroh tells him firmly. The thought had never crossed his mind.

“Or anyone else.”

“Or anyone else that knows you.” Zuko gives him a strange look, but seems to accept that.

Iroh is a traditionalist and prefers to do his research at the library, but he finds it slow going.

“How do I find out how to help a teenager who is hurting himself?” he asks a librarian eventually. She gives him a very sad look.

“You could try the medicine and health section, or the psychology section, but you might get better results with the Internet.”

Iroh has already been in the medicine and health section and the psychology section, and it’s nearing his usual bedtime.

“Where would I begin?”

They work for another hour.

“Liz!” says another librarian happening by. “What are you still doing here? Your shift was over forty minutes ago!”

“I know, I know,” says Liz sheepishly. “I was needed.”

“I insist you get some rest,” Iroh tells her firmly. “I have plenty to go on.”

“If you’re sure…”

“You have been invaluable and I cannot thank you enough for your help. But I do insist.”

Liz smiles at him and stands. “All right, then. I hope your teenager—well. Not that he’s okay, that seems silly, but that he will be soon.”

“Thank you, madam. So do I.”

Iroh checks out the books that seem the most helpful and prints off half a dozen pages from the Internet, and then he goes home to sleep.

The next day, he goes back to Ozai’s house and passes a startled Zuko the pile.

“I’m—Uncle Iroh, what is this?”

“I am so very sorry you feel the need to hurt yourself,” says Iroh.

“If you’re here to tell me to quit you can save your breath.”

“I am not here to tell you to quit.” It had been the hardest lesson from the research, but quite clear—it would do Zuko no good if Iroh pressed him to quit before he was ready or threatened any punishment.

Zuko looks at him, still guarded, but calmer, curious.

“I suspect you don’t want to be doing this any more than I want you to. No, nephew. There are resources there on how to stop if and when you are ready, but that is not why I’m here.”

“Then what?”

“There are precautions you can take, to minimize the permanent damage you cause yourself and the chances of accidentally causing a far worse outcome than you intended. No, Zuko, I am not asking you to stop. I am asking you to do whatever harm reduction you can, and to call me if you need anything.”

“Yeah, okay,” mutters Zuko, and dumps the pile on his desk.

“I would appreciate it if you would try not to run up fines on my library card,” says Iroh, going for levity. “I will of course renew them or buy you your own copies if you find them useful, but please do not let them gather dust past their due date.” He turns to go. “And I mean it, Zuko. If you need help, you can call me. You will not get in trouble.”

“Help doing what? Setting myself on fire? I think we’ve got that covered,” bites out Zuko. “Am I supposed to call you if I need a new lighter?”

It hurts, deep in Iroh’s chest, but he takes a breath and answers the question seriously. “I would prefer not to _facilitate_ your self-harm. But if the choice is between buying you a new lighter and you making use of the stovetop again, then yes.”

“I—that wasn’t my fault!” says Zuko. “I mean, it _was,_ but I didn’t do it on _purpose._ ”

“Alternately…if you need somewhere to stay, if you are feeling suicidal, if you would like help quitting, or to try therapy, or if you set your bedsheets on fire and need help replacing them before your father notices, those are all things I can help with.”

Zuko snorts, just a little, and Iroh counts it as a win.

“Yeah, okay, whatever.”

Iroh chooses to hear it as “ _Thank you.”_

Zuko takes him up on his next invitation to visit, and after that becomes a regular fixture. New burns don’t stop appearing on his skin (for Zuko can and does wear short sleeves during the summer when it’s just him and Iroh), but Iroh sometimes spots him snapping a rubber band against his wrist, and sometimes pressing ice to his skin, and once, memorably, holding his arm under running water, the lighter discarded to the side.

Most days Iroh is just relieved that Zuko is trying, that he counts Iroh’s house as a safe place, that he isn’t hiding. Some days, he thinks about how he is largely a convenience to Zuko, somewhere he doesn’t have to hide his habits, not a confidant, not someone he would reach out to for comfort. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. He’s a child, not a peer. You love him even when he doesn’t love you back.

“What was the harshest you ever punished Lu Ten?” Zuko asks abruptly one day. Iroh pretends the question doesn’t set his heart pounding and thinks about it.

“I grounded him for a month once for allowing a mouse to escape into the bedroom. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be handling it out of its cage.”

Zuko stares at him.

“What did you do when he backtalked?”

“Sent him to his room, usually. I may have yelled, on occasion.” Iroh hadn’t been the perfect parent, either. It would be fallacious not to acknowledge that just because his brother was a terrible one.

“Didn’t you spank him, at least?”

“I believe it is wrong to raise your hand against a child.” His tone is getting a little sharp, and he tries to reel it in, even if Zuko likely can’t hear the difference. “I have never seen any evidence that it has any effect other than to make the child afraid of the parent.”

“You make it sound like child abuse. Sometimes parents have to hit their kids, if they won’t learn any other way. Don’t they?”

“Child abuse is a strong word for it, but I would not dismiss the categorization outright.”

“What? Talk plainly, Uncle.”

“I’m not sure I would outright call spanking child abuse,” Iroh translated. “But if someone else told me it was, I wouldn’t argue with them.”

“But if that’s…then…”

“Yes.”

“There’s _nothing_ Lu Ten could do that would make you hurt him?”

“Nothing. Nothing that you could do, either.”

Zuko blows up at him unexpectedly over saying he “has autism.” “It’s not like the measles! I’m a person, Uncle! This is who I am! I’m _autistic!_ ” It gets nastier, with insults and accusations, but that’s the gist. Iroh realizes in time that it’s a test, and does not yell back. He is calm and polite when he sets the boundary, and he thinks he strikes a good balance between ‘no I really won’t hurt you or give up on you’ and ‘I hear you and I will use the language you want me to and I’m sorry if I was hurting you’ and ‘it’s still not acceptable to talk to me like that, I will listen if you just ask.’

He’s a child, he reminds himself. He’s an abused child. This was never going to be easy.

He wonders at what point he’d decided ‘this’ was something he was doing.

It’s not the last time Zuko yells at him, but it’s the last time he’s mean about it.

About a week later, Zuko says, “What if I went to boarding school?”

“You would hate it there,” says Iroh bluntly. “What about a private school you did not live at, but which was far enough away that you would only be able to return on vacations?”

“I can’t live on my own, though.” Zuko chews his lip, looking confused.

“I’m sure I could find something to occupy my time.”

It takes some doing to convince Zuko that yes, he can ask Iroh to move across the country with him, that he isn’t asking too much, that Iroh has nothing tying him to that house except Zuko himself, and possibly Azula.

“Father doesn’t hurt her,” says Zuko, and it’s the closest he’s come to acknowledging any of it out loud. “She’s perfect. So he adores her, and she adores him right back.”

“She will not always be perfect, and then I fear for her,” muses Iroh. “But I have every doubt that we would be able to bring her with us at this point. Maybe at a later date.”

They pick out a small three-bedroom house. Perhaps, thinks Iroh, the third bedroom could be Azula’s, if she ever came to stay. In the meantime, it becomes the guest bedroom, and if he decorates it in scarlet like Azula’s current room, Zuko doesn’t say anything.

“Zuko, I have a request, and you’re not going to like it.”

“What?” Zuko’s eyes narrow over his glass of lemonade.

“I want you to go to therapy.”

Zuko does _not_ like that, but eventually he agrees to try it.

They run into the problem of insurance. Zuko has health insurance, but if he uses it to pay for therapy, it would get back to Ozai, who would no doubt have a problem with it. They also don’t like the idea that Zuko is there without parental consent.

At the next practice, Iroh tells them that he is Zuko’s father and pays in cash.

“The insurance policy doesn’t cover it, but luckily that isn’t a problem!” he says, smiling at the receptionist.

It’s the first time he does something mildly illegal to help a child, but it won’t be the last.

Zuko meets Mai, and shortly thereafter starts dating her. Iroh likes Mai immensely, and thinks them good for each other. But almost a year later, Zuko comes storming home in a huff and buries himself under a pile of blankets. He won’t explain what happened, only that he and Mai were broken up, and not amicably.

They were never a sappy couple, but Mai was still Zuko’s closest friend, and Iroh watches him quit the drama club and bury his favorite play under a pile of clothes in the closet and aches for him.

Zuko comes home from therapy one day more quiet than usual.

“Is everything all right, nephew?” asks Iroh.

“Fine!” snaps Zuko, and stomps off to his room.

He emerges for dinner and they pretend everything is normal. Zuko is still quiet, pushing food around on his plate. He doesn’t say anything until after they’ve cleared the dishes and Iroh is settling in on the couch with a book. Zuko sits down beside him carefully. Iroh waits him out.

“You never asked what happened,” Zuko says finally, waving a hand at his face.

“There was no reason to ask you to re-live it,” answers Iroh quietly. “It was a long time before you were even willing to admit that your father hurt you. And my knowing wouldn’t change anything. Certainly I have been curious, but I have been around long enough to control my curiosity. I assumed you would talk about it if and when you wanted to.”

“My therapist thinks it would be good for me to tell you.” Zuko is staring at his lap. Iroh forcibly moves his own gaze to his hands, trying to take the pressure off.

“If you want to tell me, then I am all ears.”

Zuko sighs and starts picking at his fingernails. Iroh silently hands him a pencil to spin between his fingers.

“Father was on the phone with one of his executives, and I was eavesdropping because I wanted to know everything I could about Azulon so I could make him proud when I went to work for the company.” Iroh hides his wince. “He was telling the executive to get the ratio of full-time to part-time employees down further, that he didn’t want to lose money to paying people’s health insurance. And I couldn’t stop myself, I said ‘What?’ and then he knew I was there.”

Zuko leans his head against the back of the couch and shuts his eyes. Iroh resists the urge to touch him and disrupt his train of thought.

“And then I was already in it, right, so I stupidly tried to convince him he was wrong, that he couldn’t take away his employees’ healthcare like that, that he could get their loyalty by taking care of them and everything would run so much better.” Zuko runs a hand through his bangs, roughly mussing them. “And he hung up the phone, stormed over, grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me to the kitchen, calling me stupid and disrespectful and weak. He took the grate off the burner, lit it, and shoved my face into it until I passed out.”

Iroh cannot help it; he begins to cry silently.

“Uncle? It’s, um. It’s okay. Don’t cry.” Iroh tries and fails to stop, and Zuko puts a cautious hand on his arm. “Should I not tell you the rest?”

The _rest?_

“Finish your story,” Iroh manages. “I will be fine.”

“Okay. There’s not much more, anyway. I believed him, you know? That I _was_ stupid and disrespectful and weak, and I was paying for it with the pain, and it was kind of peaceful. I didn’t have to beat myself up about what a useless son I was, because I was already paying the price. It hurt so much, all the time. And then I healed. And I didn’t stop messing things up, I never made him proud, and I missed how much it hurt, because the burn was simple, and the guilt and the self-hatred weren’t. And that’s why I started burning myself.”

Iroh was wrong. He is not fine. He is so far from fine, and here is Zuko, who _lived_ it, who is still living in this hell, sitting next to him calmly and trying, clumsily, to comfort _him._

“That’s it,” finishes Zuko quietly, and Iroh stops holding back and reaches out for a hug. Zuko accepts it, patting him gently on the back. “I’m sorry, Uncle.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Iroh insists. “I am very glad you trusted me with that.” With an immense effort, he reins in the emotion, wipes his eyes, and finds a smile for his nephew. He can break down later. “I wish, so very much, that none of that had happened to you, but I love you and I am so proud of you for coming so far.”

Zuko looks unconvinced, but that’s all right. It’s more important that he hear it, so he can believe it someday.

Ozai and Azula come up to watch Zuko graduate, and Iroh isn’t sure if he wishes they hadn’t. Would it have hurt Zuko more to know his family didn’t even care enough to see him? Or was it worse that a day that was supposed to be happy was marred by Ozai’s presence, demanding better seating and to know if Zuko was honoring the family by going to a good school? Bad enough that he didn’t already know which school Zuko is going to. Iroh hugs Zuko tightly and tells him for the hundredth time that he’s proud of him and he loves him, and hopes it helps.

(Zuko doesn’t say it back. Zuko never says it back. That’s okay. Everyone Zuko has ever loved has betrayed him, and Iroh reminds himself every time that it’s not personal, that it isn’t about him, that Zuko’s actions are so much more important than hearing the words.)

Zuko goes to college, and Iroh starts to worry Mai was a fluke. Zuko doesn’t bond with anyone the entirety of freshman year, nor does he date anyone. He has people he can sit with at lunch or in class, but he is still sad and lonely, and it breaks Iroh’s heart.

Zuko comes home for break an actual nervous wreck, and Iroh is _alarmed._ Is college too much for Zuko? Does he need to go somewhere else? Why would he be so jumpy, always seeming like he was about to say something, and then not doing it?

“Zuko,” says Iroh at dinner one night, and Zuko startles badly. Iroh frowns at him. They’re sitting across from each other at the table; it’s hardly as though Zuko hadn’t seen him. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” Zuko clearly lies.

“You know, nephew, you can tell me anything.”

Zuko makes a pained noise and curls in on himself, pushing his plate away and dropping his head into his hands. Iroh’s worry increases fivefold.

“Zuko. May I touch you?”

Zuko shakes his head without looking up. Iroh grips the table instead of Zuko’s hand.

“You told me once that there was nothing I could do that would make you hurt me,” he says, and his voice is even more crackly than usual.

“Nothing,” Iroh agrees firmly.

“Nothing I could say? Or be?”

“ _Nothing,_ ” Iroh repeats, gripping the table harder. “I promise you.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything to that, just breathes, rough and ragged, and Iroh’s heart hurts for him.

“I love you, nephew,” he says, a little desperately.

“Even—” He gulps. “Even if I were gay?”

_Oh._

“Even then,” says Iroh emphatically. “Always.”

Zuko looks at him finally, a heartbreaking expression of desperate hope twisting his features.

“Whenever you are feeling up to it, nephew, I would very much like to give you a hug.”

Zuko hip-checks the table in his rush to fling himself out of his seat and into Iroh’s arms. Iroh catches him and holds him close.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko babbles nonsensically. “I knew you didn’t care—you’ve never cared when it was anyone else—but I was just so _scared—”_

“I do not blame you.” Iroh strokes a hand through Zuko’s thick brown hair. “I would be scared too. But I promise, there is nothing you can say that will make me love you less. There is nothing wrong with you, and I am sorry if I ever did anything to make you doubt that.”

Zuko shudders in his arms and _sobs._ Iroh does not let go.

Zuko was a volatile teenager, so Iroh doesn’t think he can be blamed for not assuming that Mai and Zuko split up _because_ Zuko was gay, not in so many words. But when Zuko goes back for sophomore year, and Iroh tries again to get him back into theatre, desperate for Zuko to make a human connection—well.

Zuko’s voice is barely audible over the phone. “I can’t, Uncle. Not after Mai.”

It breaks Iroh’s heart. “Oh, Zuko. You can’t let one relationship that ended badly ruin an entire hobby for you.”

“It’s not just that. I was _so_ shitty to her, Uncle. She knew I was gay, and I wasn’t ready to hear it, and I yelled at her and shut her out completely.”

_Oh._ And it isn’t a shock, not at all, it makes only too much sense.

“Have you tried reaching out to her, to apologize?”

“I’m afraid.” Zuko’s voice cracks. “Will you…will you stay on the line with me?”

“Of course.” There isn’t much Iroh wouldn’t do, for Zuko’s happiness. He’s aware that he may have to keep reminding Zuko of this for the rest of his life.

Mai has changed her number, but her family still lives in the same town as Iroh, and so he makes a call.

Mai calls him back, but agrees to nothing, and Iroh’s heart breaks a little more to see the extent to which these two damaged children have hurt each other and/or themselves. He hopes he’s laid some seeds, at least.

Iroh’s gamble pays off tenfold to see Zuko and Mai curled up on the floor in a desperate embrace, apologizing and forgiving and becoming tighter friends than before.

And then, around mid-October, Zuko brings actual tears to Iroh’s eyes when he calls to say that he and a boy from sword class he’s mentioned are proper friends now, and Zuko has met _his_ friends, and he describes them willingly when Iroh asks.

“Katara is compassionate and strong-willed, and I don’t really get how she and Sokka talk to each other because it sounds so mean but they actually really care about each other, and they both know it. They say it’s normal for siblings.”

“Fairly normal, yes.”

“Is it because they’re allistic, or because they weren’t raised by an abusive, controlling father?”

“I couldn’t say. Both, perhaps? You know, of course, that your father and I did not grow up together.” Iroh is almost ten years older than Ozai, and their relationship has never been close.

“Maybe. Aang is joyful, and also compassionate. He always wants to be looking at everything, talking to everyone. He definitely has ADHD, too.” He pauses. “They’re all so smart, and so kind, and I just don’t get why they want to include me so badly.”

Iroh’s heart gives a pang.

“Well, if they’re smart, perhaps you can trust their judgment that you’re a person worthy of that kindness.”

He finds Sokka on Facebook that evening and friends him.

Winter break occurs, and Mai is at their house several times a week. If he didn’t know Zuko was gay, Iroh would certainly be jumping to some incorrect conclusions. His nephew is opening up like a flower, making it even more obvious than before how much the trauma of losing her had held him back. Zuko breaks out his old copy of _Love Amongst the Dragons,_ and they even do dramatic readings of some of the scenes. Iroh films them, and sends Sokka the video.

With Mai back in Zuko’s life, several things start to become clear.

“I thought her parents were overprotective when we were teenagers,” Zuko says, “but they haven’t gotten any better now she’s an adult. They still track her phone and her social media, they’re making her do pre-law at her father’s alma mater, they still control all her finances and won’t let her work or open her own bank account or _anything._ ”

“How can they stop her from working?” Iroh asks, still confused.

“Keeping her social security card and passport locked up.” Zuko sounds frustrated. “Making her explain where she’s going if her GPS signal isn’t where they expect her to be.”

Iroh feels like it ought to be illegal to keep an adult from accessing their own ID documentation, no matter who you are. Still, who is going to enforce it? Is Mai meant to call the police about it?

…She _could._ If she asks for her documents, and they refuse, she could probably open a case for theft against them. But knowing Mai, he can’t imagine her doing anything so dramatic. She isn’t Zuko.

“Anyway, she just brushes me off when I bring it up,” sighs Zuko. “She says it’s fine.”

Zuko goes back to school, and calls Iroh two weeks later, breathless and excited.

“Uncle! Guess what?”

“What?”

“The theatre club is doing Love Amongst the Dragons and I got Roku!”

Iroh cannot breathe for a few seconds out of sheer _delight._

“That’s _wonderful_ ,” he manages at last. “I had no idea you were planning to audition.”

“Yeah, I kind of didn’t tell anyone in case I decided not to do it after all. But I did! And it isn’t a big part but it is a part!”

“When are performances? I will mark the calendar.”

“Last weekend before finals week. Friday, Saturday, and a matinee on Sunday.” Iroh finds the correct weekend on the calendar and writes ZUKO IN LATD across the entire block. “Do you think Mai would come?”

Iroh frowns, surprised. “Of course. Why wouldn’t she? You’ve spent all winter break talking about it.”

“I don’t think her parents would let her just take off.”

Hm. That could be a problem.

Iroh and Zuko manage to convince Mai to leave her phone with a friend and let Iroh drive her to watch Zuko. It’s a wonderful excuse to meet all of Zuko’s new friends, and Iroh brims with affection for all of these people who have loved his nephew when he needed it.

And Mai meets someone.

He isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he’s _right there_ as Zuko hugs Mai goodbye and says, “I didn’t know you were into girls.”

“I’m not,” says Mai, voice uncertain. “I don’t think. I don’t know. I wanted to kiss her, and I was pretty sure she wanted to kiss me, so I went for it.”

“I’ve, uh. Been there,” says Zuko, giving her a lopsided smile. “Sort of. Obviously. If you want to talk about it.”

“Maybe later,” says Mai, and hugs him again. “Listen, if you tell anyone I was being mushy I’ll get Toph to knock the daylights out of you, but I’m really proud of you.”

“Thanks.” He smiles at her softly.

Iroh drives her back to her school, and they don’t talk, and he thinks that’s the end of it. But two days later, Zuko gets a call from Mai, who has been talking to Toph’s sister, he thinks, and the next thing Iroh knows he’s on the phone with a woman who makes plans like a hardened criminal, and they’re figuring out how to get Mai out.

June has a texting app with encryption, which is less relevant in this case than the fact that it isn’t the normal text app and so Mai’s parents won’t think to open it, and any software on her phone won’t be tracking it. She also already has a list of original documents Mai needs to secure, a worryingly encyclopedic knowledge of how banking systems work, and a question for Iroh.

“How much of the law are you willing to break for this?” she asks flatly.

“I would prefer not to kill anyone,” says Iroh.

“Are you willing to lie on paperwork to get this girl a bank account, health insurance, and a phone plan?”

“Oh, certainly. It wouldn’t even be the first time.”

So Iroh forges paperwork and lies to the federal government, and challenges Mai’s parents to games of Pai Sho at several crucial moments while she retrieves her social security card and passport. (No one ever sees the White Lotus Gambit coming.) It’s a long, slow process as Mai slowly extricates herself from all the financial ties her parents have on her. She wants to finish her degree, which means working with the school to get her emergency contact changed, her bills redirected, and her financial aid re-evaluated. Iroh lives on tenterhooks for weeks, afraid that the school will blow their cover to Mai’s parents, but his fears are not realized. Meanwhile, they prepare to switch Mai to his phone plan. June’s ready to falsify the paperwork to put her on his health insurance, too, but Iroh can actually afford to just pay for Mai to have her own insurance, and he talks June into that on the logic that the less laws they actually break, the less likely they are to get caught at it.

He suspects June and Mai are siphoning cash off of her parents to fill her new bank account, but elects not to ask. Plausible deniability and all.

And then, shortly after the start of summer break, he gets a Facebook message from his niece.

“Zuko,” he calls, frowning at the screen. “There’s something here you should see.”

Zuko emerges and comes to read over his shoulder when Iroh beckons. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Iroh turns to look at him. His jaw is set, his eyes anguished. Iroh can only imagine the conflict. Azula is his sister, but she caused him so much pain. He must feel obligated to her, but so very anxious, and Iroh doesn’t know what he’ll do if Zuko says he can’t handle Azula here. His first loyalty must be to Zuko, of course, but he cannot in good conscience turn his back on Azula, either.

He’s casting around for ideas for somewhere else she could stay when Zuko looks at him and says, “Well?”

“Well what, Zuko?”

“When are we going to get her?”

It’s both heartbreaking and a relief. He’s wished they could have saved Azula for years, now, and he’s so very glad to be given the chance to do just that, but also disconsolate that it’s necessary. Ozai’s golden child has slipped from her pedestal, and he’s shown his true colors.

It’s almost easy to start laying plans to extricate Azula, and Iroh finds himself actually enjoying the challenge despite the seriousness of the situation. Unlike Mai, Azula is still underage. Zuko had been underage, of course, but they had never needed to cut Zuko’s legal ties to Ozai, only remove his person from the house. Like Mai, Azula needs her college finances redirected, but unlike Mai, she doesn’t want to return to school. So Iroh finds himself committing identity theft, or something close to it, and tying all Azula’s records to his own bank account and contact information under Ozai’s name.

He calls June once or twice to make sure he has all his bases covered, and he thinks she sounds grudgingly proud.

It’s somewhat alarming that Iroh is making a habit of fraud in various levels of severity, but he reminds himself that it’s all in the name of saving abused children.

(It’s also alarming that he personally knows enough abused children to be making a habit of it, but he tries not to think about that too hard. Nothing good will come of that.)

He ends up researching family and inheritance law, trying to make sure that Zuko and Mai and Azula will still have enough if he _is_ carted off to prison. And then he realizes that Zuko, being under 26, is still on his father’s insurance plan, and everything will be moot if Iroh is gone and Ozai still has a financial hold on Zuko. So he sets up a plan for that, too. June says he should come up with code words for his secret child-rescuing network, so he has less chance of saying something incriminating in front of a listening device, and Iroh names it the White Lotus in a fit of whimsy.

They devise a plot to convince Ozai that Azula’s school wants her early so they can move her back to Iroh and Zuko’s house before term starts. Mai volunteers to help, saying it’s only right that she pay it forward.

“What about the rest of her things?” asks Zuko when Iroh lays out the plan to collect Azula at the airport.

“Hm?”

“She’s supposed to be getting on an airplane, so she’s only going to be able to bring a suitcase’s, maybe two’s, worth of stuff. She’s never going to see the rest of it again.”

It’s a good point. He ponders that for a second. “I think there might be room in the plan for a visit to your old house, if you’re up for it.”

Zuko takes in a deep breath and lets it out. “Yeah.”

They allow a good fifteen minutes to go by after Azula texts them that they’re leaving the house. With no SOS TURNING AROUND messages in that timeframe, they pull into the driveway. Zuko finds the spare key under the mat where Azula has left it for them and unlocks the door.

It has been a little over four years since Iroh set foot in this place. So much is different—the table runners, the light fixture, the area rug—but so much is the same—the hardwood floor, the ground floor layout, the beige color of the walls.

Zuko spares it all only a moment’s attention, heading upstairs.

Iroh leaves him to it and wanders through the ground floor, stopping in the dining room and studying the portraits on the wall. Before, there were four of them, one each of Ozai, Ursa, Azula, and Zuko. Zuko’s is missing, and they’ve been rearranged so you can’t tell there was ever another one.

Zuko comes thumping down the stairs. “Any last looks at the place, nephew?” Iroh calls. Zuko pokes his head in and sees Iroh with the portraits. “’Tis a pity he would notice if I took it,” says Iroh sadly, gesturing to the portrait of Azula. “We could look around and see if yours is still here…”

“We don’t have time for that, Uncle. Besides, why would I want a reminder of this?”

Zuko leaves the key on the hook Azula said it goes on and locks the door behind them while Iroh loads the large garbage bag full of extra clothes, books, and Azula’s birth certificate and medical records in the car.

They’re almost back to the highway when Iroh decides to stop and get gas before heading to the airport, and they encounter Azula’s old friend Ty Lee. Iroh has the troubling realization that his brother has managed, indirectly, to traumatize a child that isn’t even his.

Zuko seems to have this one covered, though.

They meet Azula at the arrivals gate. Iroh couldn’t say that she looks small, or anxious, or excited, or relieved—he can’t read her expression at all. She doesn’t move, just stares at them as they walk up to her.

“Hey, Az,” says Zuko. “Can I give you a hug?”

She allows it, but doesn’t hug him back.

“Are you ready to leave?” Iroh asks, and there’s the first flicker of emotion on her face, there and gone in a second.

“Yes,” she says tonelessly.

It doesn’t last. Azula is very much like a teenage Zuko—volatile and largely unpredictable, vacillating between sharp-edged and devastated guilt at a moment’s notice. In his less charitable moments, Iroh thinks that he hasn’t missed having a teenager with the temperament of a nuclear bomb in the house.

It’s not her fault, he knows. Azula has been alone for a very long time, and she’s still struggling with the parts of herself that Ozai did his best to quash. She is very clearly _trying,_ even if she and Iroh never quite know what to do with each other.

But somehow, some way, _Zuko_ always _does._ Iroh would never have guessed that Zuko used to flinch from Azula. He’s amazed all over again every time he watches Zuko take her hands or wrap her in a hug and Azula responds. Perhaps they are making up for lost time.

The disconnect becomes particularly obvious the day Zuko leaves to go back to school. Azula’s term starts a week later, so they’re going to be alone in the house together for the difference.

How hard can it be?

Iroh doesn’t even remember how the conversation starts, later, how he inadvertently upset Azula. All he remembers is her voice, biting and merciless, and the words, “You think saving me makes up for not being able to save your own son?”

Time slows down. He is hyperaware of setting his teacup down gently, so it doesn’t splash, of pushing his chair away from the table and walking to his bedroom and shutting the door. He sits down on his bed, and the ability to move drains out of him.

It’s like being exhausted, his limbs heavy as lead, but his head isn’t floating off into dreamland, it’s replaying that sentence over and over and finally just dissolving into static.

The house phone rings. Iroh always answers the house phone. He likes to confuse the telemarketers by monologuing about tea, and scare the scammers by pretending to be the IRS fraud department.

He doesn’t answer the phone.

He likes to think that, if Azula had needed him, if she had called to him through the door, that he would have found it in himself to open it. It doesn’t matter how badly she hurt him, she is a child and he is the adult responsible for her, and it is his job to keep being the adult responsible for her no matter what she does. He promised Zuko that there was nothing he could do to make Iroh hurt him, and he wants to believe the same is true of Azula.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s starting to wonder how long it will take before his limbs work again.

Somebody opens the front door of the house.

Iroh turns his head toward the door, adrenaline starting to counter the fog, and he’s just managed to lift his arms (still heavy as lead, but they’re responding at least) when the door to his bedroom opens.

“ _Uncle,_ ” says Zuko, and crosses the room in two strides to sit down on the bed and pull Iroh into his arms.

“What?” is all Iroh manages to say.

“She didn’t mean it, uncle. You’re enough, you’re doing enough, okay? None of us think you’re just trying to replace Lu Ten, you’re doing so much good helping kids, and we love you. _I_ love you.”

That’s what does it, that’s what breaks Iroh, more so than Zuko turning Iroh’s own comfort tactics back on him, more so than Zuko having clearly _turned around and driven home again_ just to tell him this. Those words that he swore he didn’t need to hear.

He _sobs,_ quietly but fervently, and Zuko holds him.

Eventually he pulls himself together, and Zuko says quietly, “Azula’s kind of a mess. Can she come apologize?”

“Of course,” says Iroh, and has to clear his throat.

“Az,” calls Zuko, projecting to outside the room. “Come here?”

She pokes her face around the doorframe immediately, and it’s red and tear-streaked. Iroh forgives her before she even manages a tiny “I’m sorry.”

He holds out his arms, but Azula trembles and clings to the doorframe. She’s wearing one of Zuko’s hoodies, sleeves folded over her hands.

“It’s okay, Az,” says Zuko quietly. “He won’t hurt you.”

“Never,” swears Iroh.

Azula takes a step, then another, and then runs full tilt and flings herself into Iroh’s arms like if she doesn’t do it all at once her nerve will fail. He catches her and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “Please don’t hate me. Don’t make me go back.”

“I do not hate you, and I will never make you go back.”

“Remember what we talked about?” says Zuko. He has one arm still around Iroh and the other stroking Azula’s hair.

Azula swallows hard and recites, “I’m sorry. Bringing up Lu Ten just to hurt you was cruel, and I’ll never do it again. Please forgive me. And please don’t shut the door on me like that because I could not physically bring myself to come in after you when Zuko asked me to.”

Iroh doesn’t say that he’s pretty sure there’s nothing else she could possibly have said to him to provoke that reaction. He refuses to feel guilty for not somehow handling the situation better whilst heavily dissociating, and he equally refuses to guilt trip his traumatized niece. Instead, he solemnly tells her, “I forgive you, and I’m sorry you thought I might send you back, and I think we have ourselves a deal to never do it again.”

“I’m sorry I made you come back, Zuzu.”

“You didn’t make me do anything. And before you say you’re sorry you called me, what the hell else were you supposed to do in that situation? Privately drown in trauma on opposite sides of the house until morning? I’m not sorry you called me, and I’m not sorry I came home. I’m only going to be a couple hours later than I planned.” His tone is harsh, but he clutches them close.

Iroh imagines Zuko getting the call and immediately pulling off the highway, no doubt swearing his head off, and then talking his little sister down the entire way home—because there’s no way Zuko would have been able to walk right by Azula and come to him if he didn’t think she was okay.

“Did this help?” adds Zuko, plucking at one of Azula’s sweater paws. She nods. “Good. Now, are you two going to be okay?”

“I think so,” says Iroh. “Thank you, Zuko.”

“Try not to poke at each other’s deepest insecurities for the next week,” says Zuko.

“We will do our best,” Iroh says solemnly.

Zuko leaves again, and it’s awkward at first, both of them tiptoeing around each other, but the dam has been broken. When it’s time for Azula to get on the plane and head to school herself, Iroh tells her, “You are so very strong, niece, and I know you can get through this. I’m very proud of you, and I love you.”

He doesn’t quite catch what Azula mumbles into his chest, but he doesn’t need to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko's perspective, because I really love it.

Zuko has been driving for around an hour when the phone rings. He answers it, and almost has a heart attack when the car’s speakers fill the air with sobbing.

“Hello?”

“Zuzu.”

“What’s wrong?”

Azula’s crying too hard to answer.

“Az. Breathe. Okay? Deep breath in. Hold it. And out.” They repeat this a couple of times while Zuko tries frantically to organize his thoughts and not drive off the road. Azula’s probably going to start crying again as soon as she starts to tell him what’s going on, so what’s the most crucial thing? Is everyone okay? Obviously not.

“Is someone injured?” he tries when she’s a little calmer.

“No.” Images of Uncle in the hospital with a heart attack fade and he breathes a little easier.

“Is it Father?”

“No.”

“Uncle?”

“I—” She dissolves into tears again. Uncle, then.

“Did you and Uncle have a fight?”

“Yes.”

It’s a little odd, actually, that Uncle isn’t defusing this himself.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I—I said—”

“Breathe,” he says when she can’t continue. “You said what?”

“He hates me, Zuzu.”

“You told him he hates you? Or he hates you for what you said?”

“Second one.”

“Okay. I’ve lived with Uncle a while now, okay? I’ve thrown a lot of shit at him, and he’s never hated me. It’s going to be fine. Can you tell me what you said? No judging.”

“I said—” A loud sniff. “You think saving me makes up for not being able to save your own son?”

_Shit._

If there was _one_ thing in the whole world that she could have said to hit Uncle where it hurt, that was it.

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He just put down his teacup and went into his bedroom and shut the door.”

Double shit. That doesn’t sound like Uncle at all, which means Uncle isn’t any more okay than Azula. Zuko flicks on his signal and takes the upcoming exit.

“Give me two minutes, okay? I need to focus on the road. Don’t go anywhere.” He casts about for signs pointing him to the same highway he just got off, but in the other direction. _Bingo._ He follows them.

“Okay. Can you go into Uncle’s room and give him the phone?”

“No. I can’t.”

“You don’t have to talk to him. Can you stand up and go to the door?”

“ _No._ Zuko, I _cannot go through that door._ ”

“Can you knock?”

“No.”

He thinks for a second. “Okay, I’m going to hang up and call the house phone. Don’t answer it.” They disconnect, and he dials home.

It rings six times and goes to voicemail.

Uncle always answers the phone.

The odds that he’s had a stroke or something in there are very small, Zuko tells himself. He just isn’t in any state to talk to anyone and he doesn’t know it’s just me.

He calls Azula back on her cell.

“I’m coming back, okay? I’ll be there as soon as I can. But it’s going to be a little while.”

She makes a funny little hitching noise.

He has one of them, at least. He can comfort Azula while he’s waiting to comfort Uncle.

With nothing but words. Goddammit, it’s so much easier to do this with a hug. He already knows how to help Azula that way. Zuko and words are not friends.

“It’s going to be fine, okay, Az? You poked Uncle in a really sore spot, but I’m going to talk to him, and you’re going to apologize, and it’s going to be all right.”

“He’s going to send me away.”

“ _No._ ” Zuko refuses to believe that. “Uncle would never do that. We put a lot of effort into getting you.”

“I’m sorry.” Great. Guilt spiral. A hug would really come in handy here. What other options does he have?

“Az, I want you to go upstairs to my room and open the bottom drawer of my dresser.” He waits until she confirms she’s there. “Pull out a hoodie and put it on.”

“Why?”

“Best I can do for a hug for now. It’s worth a try.” It should smell like him, and it’s warm. She doesn’t argue or tell him he’s being ridiculous, which is honestly more concerning.

“Do you want to figure out what you’re going to say to Uncle?”

“Okay.”

They spend another ten or fifteen minutes working through a four-part apology, the same way they did for Ty Lee. This one is simpler. By the time they’re done, Azula’s about as calm as he thinks she’s going to get.

“I need to figure out what I’m doing next. You good for me to hang up?”

“Can you stay on the line? We don’t have to talk, just…stay?”

“That works.”

He spends most of the rest of the drive figuring out what he’s going to say to Uncle.

“Okay, Az,” he says, pulling into their development. “I’m almost home. I’m going to go talk to Uncle, and then I’ll get you and you can give your apology. Nothing bad is going to happen. I promise.”

“Okay.”

He opens the front door and walks straight to Uncle’s room. Azula’s sitting on the floor outside it, holding her phone and drowning in his angstiest hoodie. He leans down, presses a kiss to her forehead, and opens the door.

**Author's Note:**

> All y'all, probably: How come Zuko doesn't get the Blue Spirit? That would have been perfect!  
> Me: ...I couldn't conceive of a script where the Blue Spirit was a small part.  
> Other roles include Yangchen and Kuruk. Kyoshi is already in the actual story even though I haven't named her--Rangi is Suki's ex.  
> We're nearing the end, folks...just 1-3 stories left.  
> Standing invitation to let me know about SPAG errors still stands.  
> Insert usual invitation to [follow me and this verse on tumblr](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/tagged/disrespect-verse) and [request director's commentary](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/post/625660382487461889/rageprufrock-lets-go-i-will-love-you-if-you) about anything. I dare you to find a section I have nothing to say about.


End file.
